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3232Urban Crop Circle: “Ghost Roundabout” Designed to Confuse & Slow Drivershttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/rp7dhlZFNyQ/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/urban-crop-circle-ghost-roundabout-designed-confuse-slow-drivers/#respondFri, 09 Dec 2016 18:00:59 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=16529A cobbled brick intervention along a road in Cambridge operates on a strange theory: confusing drivers will cause them to be more careful as they pass through residential and other reduced-speed zones. This so-called “ghost roundabout” along Tenison Road looks a bit like either a vehicular roundabout or a pedestrian crosswalk but in fact serves]]>

A cobbled brick intervention along a road in Cambridge operates on a strange theory: confusing drivers will cause them to be more careful as they pass through residential and other reduced-speed zones.

Ghost roundabout image by Al Storer

This so-called “ghost roundabout” along Tenison Road looks a bit like either a vehicular roundabout or a pedestrian crosswalk but in fact serves neither function. It is simply meant to attract the attention of vehicle operators and get them to slow down as they drive by.

The traffic-calming revamp has been described as everything from a “UFO landing pad” and “urban crop circle” to a “free doughnut zone” and other less generous nicknames. It has faced criticism in the press and on social media since it was unveiled.

Ghost roundabout image by Al Storer

Richard Owen, who sits on a national road safety panel, described the design to the BBC as “reasonably unique” but suggested that “the behavioral science which sits behind it is quite good. It’s about making drivers feel much more uncertain about the road environment and that’s the way you slow cars down without using vertical humps.”

Representatives of local organizations like Camcycle (Cambridge Cycling Campaign), however, are skeptical of the short- and long-term efficacy of this intervention. Their own proposals for things like bollards (short posts) and alternate traffic routes are based on urban design precedents with demonstrable positive effects.

Ghost roundabout image by Al Storer

The impact of an unusual road feature like this ghost roundabout depends on surprise. But relying on novelty is a necessarily limited strategy. Once drivers pass through the area sufficient times it seems safe to assume that any calming effect will diminish (if not disappear). The approach also presents a problem in terms of replication. If each new iteration has to be unique to work, the approach could spawn a plethora of confusing urban configurations.

From the perspective of pedestrians, the brick also looks a bit like a crosswalk, which could also lead to ill-advised street crossings.

Ghost roundabout image by Al Storer

Coming at the problem from the opposite direction, there is evidence to suggest that reducing (rather than increasing) confusion can heighten a driver’s sense of risk.

The so-called “naked streets” movement, for instance, relies on stripping down road infrastructure rather than introducing new distractions. Without excess infrastructure or overt guidelines, drivers are forced to deal with conditions on the ground (and people around them) rather than relying on signs and other signals.

By a similar token, normal vehicular roundabouts (as in: the kind cars actually drive around in) have also been credited with reducing traffic speeds as well as collisions. Again, this seems to be in part a function of attention — drivers responding to their surroundings.

Meanwhile, the ghost roundabout is what it is and its effects remain to be seen. One could more generously view this as an experiment or prototype — if for some reason it ends up working better than bumps, cameras and other alternatives, perhaps it will be worth replicating or iterating. Of course, there is still the problem of novelty — copy it too many times and the strategy may become too familiar to function.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/urban-crop-circle-ghost-roundabout-designed-confuse-slow-drivers/feed/0http://99percentinvisible.org/article/urban-crop-circle-ghost-roundabout-designed-confuse-slow-drivers/Building the Wall: Highway Sound Barriers and the Evolution of Noisehttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/HFp9NoM49dI/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/building-wall-highway-sound-barriers-evolution-noise/#commentsThu, 08 Dec 2016 18:00:39 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=16676When I was a little girl, my parents took us to Washington, DC to pay a lengthy visit to the Smithsonian, some historical monuments, and other sites. In the car, we zoomed past miles of acoustic barriers my childish mind registered as some kind of giant band-aids. The image of the endless walls lining the]]>

When I was a little girl, my parents took us to Washington, DC to pay a lengthy visit to the Smithsonian, some historical monuments, and other sites. In the car, we zoomed past miles of acoustic barriers my childish mind registered as some kind of giant band-aids. The image of the endless walls lining the sides of the interstate continues to fascinate me even today, as a young adult and a graduate student in acoustics.

a 2010 survey by the Federal Highway Administration counted 2,748 linear miles of noise barriers built along highways in the U.S. But how do these walls work, and what led to their development?

The concept of the sound barrier and how it works is remarkably simple. In fact, it is one of the simplest solutions in the entire field of acoustics. It is a wall: a hard surface made of wood, concrete, brick, or other reflective, strong and durable material.

Sound reacts to solid walls in three ways: it is reflected (bounces off the surface); absorbed and/or transmitted (passes through the barrier to the other side.)

Noise barrier diagram by the Federal Highway Administration

The taller the wall, the more surface area it will have to effectively do all three of these things. Since no wall is infinitely tall, a certain percentage of sound passes over the top of the wall (the fancy acoustical term for this is diffraction), effectively hopping the fence into suburbia.

Diffraction diagram by the Federal Highway Administration

If a wall is effectively textured, it can also diffuse sound, causing it to scatter in a variety of directions, which can further aid in the reduction of noise.

This is why newer-generation sound walls feature brick-like texturing, corduroy concrete, or other embossed patterns. Care must be taken to make sure that the reradiation of sound from diffusion doesn’t produce an increase in the amount of sound able to pass over the wall via diffraction.

According to metrics by the Department of Transportation, in order to achieve a 5 decibel reduction of noise, a barrier must be built at the line of sight (and hearing) of the average individual. Every additional meter above the line of sight reduces the sound by an additional 1.5 decibels. This works through reducing the amount of sound energy able to pass over the wall via diffraction.

That’s it.

Yes, that’s actually 99% of the science behind the highway sound barrier. Most of the math behind it can be understood by an eleventh grader. The methodology is so simple; the best way to improve the wall acoustically is to simply build it thicker and taller, with slight material variations. Any improvements to the sound wall since its inception have been mostly aesthetic.

The unfortunate reality is that acoustical barriers are ugly. Attempts to make them translucent, decorative, or otherwise have had mixed results acoustically and are often much too expensive for state transportation budgets. Concrete, masonry, wood, and other common building materials are durable, inexpensive, and generally the most acoustically effective.

Sound wall along Highway 695 near Catonsville, MD; image by the author.

Do they work? In field measurements (taken by the author) at a site where construction of a new sound wall is underway (along Highway 695 near the Catonsville/Frederick Road exit), the sound pressure level (SPL) behind the wall was-indeed- 5 decibels (A-weighted) less than the sound outside of it. For scale, most people cannot hear a change in sound levels below 3 decibels. The noise of the highway remains in the foreground of life for those whose homes flank it.

Sound wall along backyards in Cantonsville, MD; image by the author.

The Sound Barrier & Modern Sprawl

Sound barriers are what those within the discipline call “defensive” acoustics – solutions that are applied after something becomes a problem rather than being integrated into a design from its beginning. They are afterthoughts. People who lived in the communities originally displaced by mid-century urban renewal efforts never expected that a highway would soon be going through their neighborhoods. They were therefore left defenseless against the ceaseless noise.

To put the walls in perspective: never before in history have people needed to build a physical barrier to shield themselves from noise. In this respect, the sound wall can be seen as the apex of an aural crisis a century in the making.

Arroyo Seco Highway in 1940 by Caltrans

The sound wall can be traced back to the sprawling automobile culture of California. When noise from the Arroyo Seco Highway interfered with the activities of the nearby Hollywood Bowl, a team of researchers from UCLA put together a studyin 1958 for the California Department of Transportation, one of the first documented acoustical studies on highway noise.

Diagram of sound wall prototype from a 1968 study by the California Dept of Transportation

Noise as we know it is an entirely modern phenomenon, beginning with the first and second industrial revolutions. During this period, which spanned most of the 19th century, manufacturing technology and the modern factory changed the nature of life and work in Western civilizations. Before that, noise mainly came from living things: people and animals. In our era of constant noise, it’s difficult to conceive of such a world.

Mulberry Bend, New York c. 1890 by Jacob Riis

Noise from transportation is even more recent. During the height of late 19th century industrial manufacturing, the city and its factories were the source of the majority of noise, joined later by the railway system. The origin point of our current highways and the concept of the commute both date from the last quarter of the 19th century.

In some cities such as Chicago and New York, the establishment of railway transit in resulted in suburbs such as Oak Park and Queens. In other parts of America, the invention of the streetcar spawned the first generation of suburbs, and the middle and upper classes began slowly trickling out of the cities to escape both the air and noise pollution.

Streetcar suburb outside of Pittsburgh by Firefly4342

At the time, rail travel in the US was a robust and thriving system, with many companies owning and operating sprawling lines. The transportation noise in the first- and second-generation suburbs was not ceaseless like the noise of today’s highways. Noise in these communities could be expected at regularly scheduled intervals, and the sound levels of trains or streetcars passing through was nowhere near substantial enough to cause hearing damage. These same areas are louder today than they have ever been.

Railroads in the United States in 1918 via Project Gutenberg

These systems limited the amount of sprawl outside of cities, as commuter lines were expensive and time consuming to build. Their decline began with the notorious dismantling of the streetcar system thanks in part to collusion between General Motors, Standard Oil, and other industry insiders, combined with a population who, lured by the perception of freedom, preferred to car. Shortly after, the first Federal Highway Act established the first interstate road systems, which triggered the first generation of automobile suburb subsequently interrupted by the Great Depression and World War II.

Somehow, during this time, engineers and developer ignored the obvious fact that highways and cars created noise. They made no attempt to develop or standardize any form of noise control before embarking on mass construction. The opportunity to establish widespread protocols for noise reduction at the source, such as slower driving speeds and the preservation of green barriers between highways and communities, was lost.

Construction diagrams for the Arroyo Seco Highway from the Library of Congress

It took until the late 60s for people to realize the effects noise can have on everyday life. Aside from hearing loss, noise exposure is linked to psychological problems such as feelings of isolation, anxiety, depression, difficulty concentrating, and a reduced efficiency at completing tasks, as well as physical problems like high blood pressure, insomnia, and fatigue.

Those displaced by highways during the urban renewal era, often poor communities and communities of color who often lacked the resources to fight back against development, were left to suffer the ceaseless noise as countless others (including those who helped cause the problem) simultaneously escaped its adverse effects

Proposed map for the Lower Manhattan Expressway from the Library of Congress

For many of these communities, the sound wall, while reducing the noise, also fostered a sense of further isolation. Walls are a powerful image, and the sound wall could be seen as a metaphor for the crisis of modernity, sprawl, and ill-conceived ideas of progress.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/building-wall-highway-sound-barriers-evolution-noise/feed/2http://99percentinvisible.org/article/building-wall-highway-sound-barriers-evolution-noise/Guano Maniahttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/ACQ3UE_309U/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guano-mania/#respondTue, 06 Dec 2016 23:22:32 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=episode&p=16627In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, making it the largest marine preserve in the world at the time. The expansion closed 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining. The preserve is nowhere near the mainland United States nor is it all in close]]>

In 2014, President Obama expanded the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument, making it the largest marine preserve in the world at the time. The expansion closed 490,000 square miles of largely undisturbed ocean to commercial fishing and underwater mining.

To understand how the U.S. has jurisdiction over these waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, one has to look back to the 19th Century when, for a brief period, the U.S. scoured the oceans looking for rock islands covered in guano. That is: seabird poop.

Guano was a great fertilizer and many believed it would revolutionize farming, which traditionally involved cycling crops or simply depleting soil nutrients and moving to new land.

While novel to Americans and Europeans, using bird poop as fertilizer was nothing new to the Quechua people of Peru who had long mined it from the Chincha Islands off the southwest coast of Peru. For centuries, seabirds nesting on the islands had piled up guano, sometimes close to a 100 feet deep, making it a rich and ready source of the stuff.

Sacking guano to be moved by automatic trolley and loaded on ships from the Ballestas Islands

Europeans hadn’t shown any interest in guano until the Prussian naturalist Alexander von Humboldt visited the Peruvian coast in 1804, and saw laborers unloading ships filled with seabird poop. Von Humboldt took a sample and brought it back to Europe. A German chemist named Justus Von Liebig subsequently began promoting a theory that soil fertility came down to a few critical nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. Peruvian guano was rich in all three.

It was the agricultural analogue to discovering gold.

Chinese worker accommodations

The Peruvians began to mine guano on a commercial scale. Their operations relied on an abusive labor system, first with locally coerced laborers and then with imported Chinese workers. Miners lived on the islands in tents and shacks, working up to 17 hours a day. The wages were low, and the conditions were awful; guano is acrid, and caustic when inhaled.

Chute to carry guano to waiting ships

The guano trade made its way to Europe via British merchants, and soon farmers across the continent were using Peruvian guano on their fields. Word of the fertilizing power of seabird poop reached the United States, and by the late 1840s the country had entered a state of what historians have called “guano mania.” Tens of thousands of tons of guano were being imported to the U.S. every year.

Mining a mountain of guano

British firms controlled the Peruvian trade, and guano was expensive. American interests resolved to break the monopoly. Entrepreneurs in the United States petitioned Congress to create a mechanism to help them claim their own guano islands. Some lawmakers opposed this effort, on the grounds that it smacked of the same kind of imperialism that various European countries were engaged in around the world at the time.

The U.S., of course, already had its own approach to imperialism, having taken over much of North America by stealing territory from indigenous people. But political leaders didn’t think of this as imperialism, since these lands were incorporated into the country, first as territories and then as states.

Ultimately, a compromise was reached: the guano islands would not be considered as subject to the sovereignty of the U.S. but rather as “appertaining” to the United States. While few knew what this meant from a legal perspective, it was softer than claiming full ownership.

In 1856, the Congress passed the Guano Islands Act. Over the next several years U.S. companies claimed more than 70 islands throughout the Pacific and the Caribbean.

Mining guano and carting it by rail trolley to waiting ships

While the interest in guano declined as commercial fertilizers became available, the Guano Islands Act had set a legal precedent that would help justify future acts of American imperialism on islands that were, unlike the Guano Islands, very much inhabited.

In 1898, following the Spanish-American War, the United States took possession of Puerto Rico, the Phillipines, and Guam, setting off a debate as to how these islands and their citizens would be treated. Statehood was seen as politically problematic — there was little interest in absorbing islands full of people of color as new territories or states, which left them in limbo.

By 1901, the issue of their status had reached the U.S. Supreme Court. The case raised the question: could the U.S. impose duties on a shipment of oranges from Puerto Rico to New York? The constitution prohibited these duties among the states but these were not states The court ruled that these duties were legal since Puerto Rico was “foreign in a domestic sense,” making it not fully part of the U.S. Some of the justices pointed to the Guano Islands Act as justification.

United States Economic Exclusion Zone – Pacific-centered map via NOAA

This has perpetuated a kind of limbo status for these territories that continues to be an issue. Puerto Rico, and other islands like Guam, American Samoa, and the Northern Marianas are still “foreign in a domestic sense,” which has facilitated continuous U.S. control thereof, but without the U.S. providing all of the associated rights and privileges. Puerto Ricans, for instance, cannot vote in federal elections, but they are considered American citizens and can freely travel and work in the U.S.

United States Minor Outlying Islands in the Pacific Ocean (Navassa Island not pictured)

The U.S. still holds claim over a few of the old Guano Islands in the Pacific, although they go by a different name today: the United States Minor Outlying Islands. They don’t have any permanent residents, but these little rock islands are part of the American empire and thus provide the legal justification for President Obama’s creation of one of the largest marine reserves in the world.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guano-mania/feed/0http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/guano-mania/The Northwest Angle: Inside the Nesting Geography of Exclaves & Enclaveshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/IHVEx0aBLBs/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/northwest-angle-inside-nesting-geography-exclaves-enclaves/#commentsMon, 05 Dec 2016 18:00:00 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=16210Maps of the United States feature a small but noticeable bump up in the middle — a spot where Minnesota seems to protrude into Canada. This unusual location, known as the Northwest Angle (or simply: the Angle), is the only portion of the mainland Lower 48 that extends above the 49th parallel. And it gets]]>

Maps of the United States feature a small but noticeable bump up in the middle — a spot where Minnesota seems to protrude into Canada. This unusual location, known as the Northwest Angle (or simply: the Angle), is the only portion of the mainland Lower 48 that extends above the 49th parallel. And it gets stranger as you zoom in.

At its northern peak there is land but between that area and the rest of the state lies water. The Angle is thus effectively inaccessible by car except by way of Canada — visitors and 100-odd residents driving to and from the area have to present their passport, usually to a border official remotely connected via a digital terminal inside a small booth. The Northwest Angle started out as a complex cartographic error that was caused by confusion over the source of the Mississippi River.

Border crossing reporting booth at Jim’s Corner, Northwest Angle

The Angle is what political geographers call a practical exclaveof the US. Broadly, an exclave is any part of a country detached from the main body of the nation. In this particular case, the “practical” modifier refers to the fact that the water between the disconnected areas is all part of Minnesota (so one could travel between them by boat).

Enclaves & Counter-Enclaves

Exclaves are fascinating but things get strange fast in the realm of enclaves. The distinctions and overlaps get complicated quickly, but in simple terms: enclaves are countries or parts of countries entirely contained within a single other country’s territory. So if there happened to be a Canadian city in Utah, for instance, it would be an enclave.

C is B’s exclave but it is also enclaved by A – diagram by Menchi (CC BY-SA 3.0)

This may sound unusual but there are lots of enclaves around the world — in some cases, entire countries sit within other countries. The Republic of San Marino, for instance, is entirely enclaved within Italy.

And again, as we zoom in on some of these, they get increasingly weird, particularly in the realm of counter-enclaves (or: second-order enclaves).

Nahwa, for instance, is legally part of the United Arab Emirates but is completely surrounded by Madha, which belongs to Oman. Madha is in turn, however, surrounded by UAE territory. So a piece of the UAE sits within a piece of Oman that sits within the UAE.

In Europe, there are a number of Dutch enclaves that are situated inside Belgian enclaves that in turn reside in the Netherlands. This creates some fairly odd situations. At one time, for example, Dutch laws forced restaurants to close earlier, which was problematic for border-spanning establishments. The solution? Customers were asked to move to a table across between countries to continue their meal. The complexity of these borders trace back to all kinds of old medieval treaties and land swaps between lords and dukes. Some were later clarified by more modern agreements but other anomalies remain.

But none of these exclaves, enclaves or counter-enclaves holds a candle to Dahala Khagrabari, historically the most complexly nested enclave in the world. In a nutshell: picture a piece of India inside a piece of Bangladesh inside a piece of India inside of Bangladesh. It is the only known third-order enclave in history. The two-acre parcel at its center was owned by of a Bangladeshi farmer who would wake up in Bangladesh and cross into India to farm his land. This record-setting enclave was eliminated in 2015, however, during a final simplifying cross-border land swap.

Epilogue: Inception Island

While it represents neither an enclave nor an exclave, fans of Inception-esque geography may find the following of interest: the world’s largest known island-in-a-lake-on-an-island-in-a-lake-on-an-island. For the purposes of simplicity let’s call it Inception Island.

This otherwise-nameless isle in Canada’s Nunavut Territory measures about 1,000 feet across and sits in a small lake nestled within a longer island about 60 miles inland from the edge of Victoria Island. Needless to say, canoes and kayaks are your best bet of reaching this place — short of flying, portaging seems like the only way to go.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/northwest-angle-inside-nesting-geography-exclaves-enclaves/feed/1http://99percentinvisible.org/article/northwest-angle-inside-nesting-geography-exclaves-enclaves/The Architecture of Evil: Dystopian Megacorps in Speculative Fiction Filmshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/pvi-kgYPIts/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architecture-evil-dystopian-megacorps-speculative-fiction/#commentsFri, 02 Dec 2016 18:25:52 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=16562The evil corporation has always held a special place in film. From Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation to Robocop’s Omni Consumer Products and beyond, dystopian capitalism is a staple of many films’ most successful antagonists. What’s fascinating about the evil megacorporation is that its architectural aesthetic has remained virtually unchanged throughout its history: brooding Late Modernist]]>

The evil corporation has always held a special place in film. From Blade Runner’s Tyrell Corporation to Robocop’s Omni Consumer Products and beyond, dystopian capitalism is a staple of many films’ most successful antagonists.

What’s fascinating about the evil megacorporation is that its architectural aesthetic has remained virtually unchanged throughout its history: brooding Late Modernist (AKA High-tech or Structural Expressionist) buildings have become a well-worn trope, reaching a peak during the sci-fi smorgasbord of the 80s.

Modernism has always been at the forefront of the sinister in film, as seen in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis with its Art Deco styling and every Bond villain’s house ever. But the architecture of Evil, Inc. is almost exclusively from the Late Modern period, which spanned roughly between 1960 and 1980. Let’s look at a few examples:

Robocop (1987)

Though the story of Robocop takes place in futuristic Detroit, the film was shot exclusively in Dallas, Texas. Set in a dystopian future where the Omni Consumer Products corporation controls the city of Detroit, the 80s film features at the heart of the evil corporation a Late Modern building by I.M. Pei: the Dallas City Hall.

Dallas City Hall was built in 1978 and is an example of Brutalism, a modern architecture movement lasting from around 1950 to 1980 that focuses on the sculptural use of bare concrete. The term Brutalism comes from the French beton brut meaning raw concrete.

Why use Dallas City Hall for the headquarters of an evil corporation who rules everything with an iron fist?

The answer comes from the fact that Brutalism was an extremely popular architectural style for government buildings in the 60s and 70s — it was inexpensive to build while still appearing Modernist. During the 70s especially, some of the most notorious government buildings were constructed in this style, giving bureaucracy an unintentionally sinister air.

Perhaps the most famous such structure of the period is the J. Edgar Hoover FBI Building in Washington, DC:

Designed by Charles F. Murphy & Associates and constructed in 1975, this building became the poster child for sinister government architecture (and the fact that the FBI was housed inside didn’t help this perception much.) The building’s aesthetic became synonymous with surveillance and policing in general — for a movie about a rogue cyborg cop, choosing that aesthetic was basically a no-brainer.

Two interesting aesthetics are at work in this film, present in one real building and one fictional one. The real building is the Bonaventure Hotel, featured in the opening act of the movie where Deckard, our android-hunting mercenary protagonist, has a run in with a cop.

A glass-and steel-monolith built in 1976 is instrumental in establishing the futuristic dystopian mood of the film. Designed by architect John C. Portman Jr., the hotel epitomizes the era of Late Modern corporate architecture. It features vast curtain walls in interesting shapes, with the divisions of the windows not necessarily reflecting the size of the spaces behind them and obfuscating the scale of the building in relationship to the human form.

The building is both futuristic and dated — it also looks like anything but a hotel. The reflective glass facade is unwelcoming — it exhibits the same unsettling monumentality as Dallas City Hall but executed with different materials, making it well-suited to the cyberpunk world of Blade Runner.

The other main set building in the film is the headquarters of the fictional Tyrell Corporation, which owes its design to other interesting design movements of late modernity.

The Tyrell Corporation, the sinister entity behind the movie’s rogue androids, is housed in a futuristic temple of evil that takes its influence from two places: Late Modern architecture by architects such as Kevin Roche and Philip Johnson, as well as the High-tech movement spearheaded by architect Richard Rodgers.

The building that immediately comes to mind upon looking at the Tyrell Corporation is the Pyramids, a complex of buildings in Indianapolis designed by Kevin Roche and constructed in 1972:

Built for the College Life Insurance Company, these structures epitomize the changing image of Modernism, from one of International Style restraint, to one of sculptural Expressionism; in Roche’s case, exploring the use of glass to play with elements of mass and scale to give something so fragile a new expression of monumentality.

The other influence of the Tyrell Corporation comes from the so-called High-Tech movement of architecture, which took the aesthetic of the machine to its logical extreme. The most famous work of this style was the Pompidou Centre in France, designed by Richard Rogers and Renzo Piano, built in 1971, which turned the world of architecture completely on its head.

The idea behind High-tech architecture was that the structure of a building could be expressed by its exterior. While Brutalism accomplished this by using sculptural forms to reflect the structure of the building’s interior, High-tech architecture literally put the building’s “innards” on the outside, giving the hidden mechanisms of a structure their own expression.

Intentionally or otherwise, the buildings take on an industrial sheen, certainly welcomed into the aesthetic language of films like Blade Runner. The combination of the corporate sheen of Roche and the pseudo-industrial language of Rodgers pair nicely when the subject matter is an evil corporation in an gritty future Los Angeles that manufactures fake human beings. The two aesthetic languages were never merged in real life, partially because one was quintessentially American and the other European, which makes their integration in Blade Runner especially fascinating.

Total Recall (1990)

Like Blade Runner, Total Recall is based off of a story by Philip K. Dick, and was filmed by the same director as Robocop. The director originally wanted to shoot the film in Houston, but it was moved to Mexico City due to budget constraints. The mind-bending plot, revolving around Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character believing he’s been implanted with false memories, is well suited to the aging Modernism south of the border. The film features the Hotel Nikko, a 750-room behemoth built in 1985.

One of the interesting things about this building is that it is an example of how aesthetics from the United States took about a decade to become the norm in Mexico. A building designed in 1985 in Mexico fits into the US’s 1975 aesthetic language.

The concrete buildings of the 70s, endlessly replicated worldwide because of their inexpensive price tag, contribute heavily to a sense of placelessness in an increasingly global world still entrenched in the armaggeddon rhetoric of the Cold War. The facelessness of the modernist architecture of Mexico City featured in the film contributes to the delirium and helplessness portrayed by the plot. Ultimately, none of the filming locations were designed by famous Mexican or American architects, and the forgettableness of the buildings themselves ties in well with the movie’s themes of memory.

The Matrix (1999)

The mind-bending film The Matrix, which immediately became a pop-culture sensation upon its release, also deals with themes of the nature of memory and what it means to be human. Filmed in Sydney, Australia, the film features elaborate chase scenes throughout the city’s rich urban fabric. One of the most iconic buildings of the film is the Metacortex firm where Neo works as a programmer (and begins to suspect that something is not quite right in the world). The Metacortex building is actually Sydney’s Met Center, a shopping center built in 1980.

What’s interesting architecturally about this building is that it bridges the gap between glass-pane Modernist corporate architecture and the Brutalist architecture of late modernity. The building features the Brutalist monumentality in its concrete spine-like core, as well as the explicit articulation of interior space on the exterior. The glass volumes, separated by the nodes of the spine, are cantilevered along the building’s sides and sculptural in and of themselves. In a movie about people being brains in vats, the building’s spine metaphor fits in with a dark technocratic world.

But why did producers choose the architecture of Late Modernism, as the face of sinister megalopoly?

Modern architecture from its inception has always been associated with the coming of the machine. The movement’s founders in Europe believed that the architecture of the time laid in the hands of industry – factories, concrete silos, and other functional, rational buildings. New technology like steel and reinforced concrete enabled architects to come up with dramatic and powerful forms — these were previously unattainable with iron, wood, and masonry. Because of this new technology, ornament was seen as frivolous — it could be removed or separated from the structure itself and merely applied to the outside.

While this was all very interesting for the world of architecture professionals, millions of people toiled away in factories every day. The idea of coming home to a building that looked like the factory was abhorrent to many of them. Thus, modernism was restricted to public buildings, corporations, and isolated houses while the rest of the public post-war built Levittown.

If the cute little house with the white picket fence was the home of wholesome goodness, then the modernist skyscraper was its antithesis. As the 20th Century moved forward, the machine aesthetic of the 20s popularized by the Bauhaus was wearing thin. Eventually, the philosophy of architecture became fractured in the 1960s and 1970s, the period during which many of the buildings most loathed by the public were constructed.

In addition to architectural fragmentation, the 60s and 70s were a heavily fractured time politically. This was the era of Vietnam, a population explosion, environmental crisis, the energy crisis, and other dismal and depressing events. In the boom of the 80s, a wealth of great science fiction films came out with dystopian elements at the core of their stories, their aesthetics drawing on past precedents.

The fascination with corporate control and its absence of ethics coupled with new technology (spurred by the beginning of the home computer) culminated in some of the era’s best known speculative fiction film, all of which used the architecture of Late Modernism as a backdrop for evil.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architecture-evil-dystopian-megacorps-speculative-fiction/feed/1http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architecture-evil-dystopian-megacorps-speculative-fiction/NBC Chimes: Behind the Scenes with the First Trademarked Soundhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/k4iSUQ6b1VA/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nbc-chimes-behind-scenes-first-trademarked-sound/#commentsTue, 29 Nov 2016 22:17:52 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=episode&p=16524The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in broadcasting. Originating in the 1920s, the three key sequential notes are familiar to generations of radio listeners and television watchers. Many companies have tried to trademark sounds but only around 100 have ended up being accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office —]]>

The NBC chimes may be the most famous sound in broadcasting. Originating in the 1920s, the three key sequential notes are familiar to generations of radio listeners and television watchers. Many companies have tried to trademark sounds but only around 100 have ended up being accepted by the United States Patent and Trademark Office — and NBC’s iconic chimes were the first.

Historically, stations used chimes and gongs to create a signature sound. But the NBC chimes were not just a branding mechanism: their noise masked the sound of switching between stations live on the air. Pops and clicks were less audible with the chimes playing on top.

Originally, NBC came up with a seven-chime sequence that would be played life by radio announcers on air. This longer sequence was later shortened to three notes so the announcers could generate the sounds more consistently. Eventually, a specialized device was developed to play the chimes — an automated system sitting in each station.

Ultimately, NBC’s three little chimes didn’t just define a television network, they defined a generation. This episode of Twenty Thousand Hertz features the last person to play the NBC chimes on the NBC radio network, broadcaster Rick Greenhut, as well as radio historian John Schneider. Twenty Thousand Hertz is an audio program that tells “the stories behind the world’s most recognizable and interesting sounds.” Subscribe and listen on iTunes or via RSS.

Chip Readers: July 24, 2016 comic from Retail by Norm Feuti]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nbc-chimes-behind-scenes-first-trademarked-sound/feed/6http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/nbc-chimes-behind-scenes-first-trademarked-sound/Architectural Ecosystems: Bioreactors Generate Green Energy, Shade & Oxygenhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/o7yitd8YT6A/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architectural-ecosystems-bioreactors-generate-green-energy-shade-oxygen/#respondMon, 28 Nov 2016 18:00:45 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=15546A compelling urban canopy designed by EcoLogics Studio boasts bioreactors able to create a forest’s worth of oxygen daily (the equivalent of 400,000 square feet of natural woodlands). In that same short time span, the system can also produce hundreds of pounds of biomass by growing green microalgae that can be turned into bio-fuel. A]]>

A compelling urban canopy designed by EcoLogics Studio boasts bioreactors able to create a forest’s worth of oxygen daily (the equivalent of 400,000 square feet of natural woodlands). In that same short time span, the system can also produce hundreds of pounds of biomass by growing green microalgae that can be turned into bio-fuel.

A prototype module of this BioCanopy design was set up in Milan, Italy. It demonstrated how a constructed ecosystem can provide civic benefits by filtering air, shading spaces and generating energy. The project also shows more broadly how vertical green design can go beyond window dressing and tackle global environmental issues.

This technology may sound far-fetched, but a similar approach has already been successfully deployed in the world’s first bio-adaptive facade. Featuring SolarLeaf technology developed by Arup, the BIQ House in Hamburg, Germany houses over 100 bioreactors teeming with microalgae. The integrated systems at work here form a unique architectural ecosystem in which living organisms play a crucial part.

Bioreactors around the exterior of the structure generate renewable energy from algal biomass and solar thermal heat. A series of transparent glass facade panels house the microscopic algae, forming a closed-loop system independent of soil or weather conditions. Energy generated can be used to modulate temperature or supply hot water. In this case, the system services 1/3 of the building’s heating needs.

The biomass does more than simply provide energy – it also works as dynamic shading and acoustic buffering system that responds naturally to external changes. The more sunlight the system gets, the more the biomass grows and blocks off excess natural light. During peak daylight hours, this provides an organic and automatic shade and noise reduction layer to protect interior spaces.

These Biolamps contain water and microalgae, processing CO2 and expelling O2. Grown biomass is in turn pushed via a network of underground tubes to fueling stations. Consider the carbon loop: pollution generated by cars is itself captured and used to power cars.

BIQ House facade in Hamburg, Germany

Bioreactors offer compelling benefits to the built environment. Still, working with living cultures inevitably adds a layer of cost and complexity to active system design. More sophisticated proposals for public spaces would also necessitate big infrastructure overhauls. Developers and occupants may also need convincing – bio-adaptive buildings are less glamorous at a glance than intensive green facades.

Vertical Forest building in Milan, Italy

Extant concepts and prototypes still need work to become an everyday part of the toolbox for architects and urban planners. In the end, it is up to both design visionaries and tech innovators to continue pushing the envelope on building ecosystems.

Meanwhile, people looking to go (and grow) green at home may want to start by thinking beyond grass lawns. Derived from NASA data, this guide to air-filtering houseplants is a good place to begin:

NASA guide to air-filtering houseplants, infographic by LoveAndGarden.com]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architectural-ecosystems-bioreactors-generate-green-energy-shade-oxygen/feed/0http://99percentinvisible.org/article/architectural-ecosystems-bioreactors-generate-green-energy-shade-oxygen/Railway Market: Urban Train Track Doubles as Shopping Alley in Thailandhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/mEep8n0y6SI/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/railway-market-urban-train-track-doubles-shopping-alley-thailand/#commentsFri, 25 Nov 2016 18:00:25 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=15550Southwest of Bangkok, the Maeklong Railway Market is one of the most popular places to shop for seafood in Thailand. But buyer beware: oncoming trains may spoil your trip if you fail to step out of the way. The market gets its nickname Talat Rom Hup (“Umbrella Pulldown Market”) from the trains that pass through]]>

Southwest of Bangkok, the Maeklong Railway Market is one of the most popular places to shop for seafood in Thailand. But buyer beware: oncoming trains may spoil your trip if you fail to step out of the way.

The market gets its nickname Talat Rom Hup (“Umbrella Pulldown Market”) from the trains that pass through multiple times a day.

Like clockwork, sellers pull back their wares and raise their awnings to make way for locomotives. Vendors and visitors alike cut it close when the time comes, often sitting or standing just off to one side. Some wares are left in baskets that the raised sides of the train just barely pass above.

As a train approaches, a bell sound is transmitted over a speaker system as an initial warning signal. For any who miss that alarm, the train’s foghorn follows as it rounds the bend.

Best known for its seafood, the market also sells an array of other wares, including fruits, vegetables, meats, snacks, clothes and flowers.

The market is located close to the Maeklong Railway Station, which is the last stop along the Maeklong Railway Line. TielandtoThailand has more images as well as tips for photographers interested in shooting this unique urban sight.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/article/railway-market-urban-train-track-doubles-shopping-alley-thailand/feed/1http://99percentinvisible.org/article/railway-market-urban-train-track-doubles-shopping-alley-thailand/Dollar Store Town: Inside the World’s Biggest Wholesale Markethttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/JZbWx1Ew5k0/
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/dollar-store-town-inside-worlds-biggest-wholesale-market/#commentsWed, 23 Nov 2016 04:00:28 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=episode&p=16409Go into any dollar store in the United States and you’ll find the same kind of stuff. There are grocery items and cleaning products, some of them generic and others brand-named. But then there are other things for sale—toys and jewelry and knick-knacks that have a kind of generic cheapness to them. Dollar stores are]]>

Go into any dollar store in the United States and you’ll find the same kind of stuff. There are grocery items and cleaning products, some of them generic and others brand-named. But then there are other things for sale—toys and jewelry and knick-knacks that have a kind of generic cheapness to them.

Dollar stores are not just a U.S. phenomenon. They can be found in Australia and the United Kingdom, the Middle East and Mexico. And a lot of the stuff—the generic cheap stuff for sale in these stores—comes from one place. A market in China, called the International Trade Market, or: the Futian market.

The Futian market is enormous. It is made up thousands of little stalls scattered through four interconnected buildings. Estimates put its size at around 43 million square feet. That’s about ten times bigger than the Mall of America.

The market is in the city of Yiwu, about two hundred miles southwest of Shanghai. Being a market city, it is quite vibrant in parts, but over the years Yiwu has transformed from a bucolic mountain town to a cookie-cutter industrial city.

The city of Yiwu. Image courtesy of Tobias Andersson Åkerblom and Daniel Whelan (Bulkland)

In the 1970s, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, communist China began to open itself up to capitalism. The province of Zhejiang, where Yiwu is located, had a history of trade and people there were eager to join this new economy. Villagers spent their life savings on cheap factory equipment and started producing items that were easy to make—things like playing cards, Christmas decorations, and wooden toys.

The street markets that began this transformation evolved over time into the enclosed Futian market. Every day thousands of foreign traders visit the market looking for things to buy in bulk and sell to dollar stores and other vendors in their home countries.

Wang Xiaoyang has a stall in the Futian market selling Christmas items. Seven days a week she’s in the shop surrounded by Santas—Santas surfing, Santas climbing out of chimneys, Santas riding motorcycles. But before she started this business, Wang Xiaoyang had never heard of Christmas, let alone Santa.

Wang Xiaoyang is just one link in the economic chain that starts in China and ends at your local dollar store. The hub of that economy is certainly the Futian market in Yiwu, but the whole Zhejiang province is involved. Neighboring towns are all producing different items, and all have their specialties. One town might make plastic Santas while another makes costume jewelry.

Most of the production is being carried out by very small operations out of places like a family garage or basement using small pieces of industrial equipment. Sometimes it is as simple as a little sewing machine, or a device that that sets metal into a mold. After the item is created, it will often be taken to some other town for packaging.

For many people in the Zhejiang province, this isn’t even their full-time job. Often these businesses are simply side ventures that people operate at night after long days working on nearby farms.

The kind of unbridled capitalism that created the Futian market has taken its toll on China. When it is unchecked, as it is in places like Yiwu, you see a landscape nearly destroyed. Mountains are dug out and people burn rubbish. Smog envelops the city. Infrastructure is sometimes non-existent.

But many people have seen their lives changed from an existence where there was often little to eat and virtually no consumer goods to buy. Wang Xiaoyang has seen her business grow, and it’s allowed her family to move into the middle class. But now she wants something more—to travel, to study, to help other people. She doesn’t want to sell Santas seven days a week for the rest of her life.

The Chinese government is also interested in moving the country away from its reputation as the world’s factory. They don’t want to be the place where all of the “Made in China” junk comes from. They want to be the next South Korea or Taiwan, or Japan—making high-tech goods like computers, cars and solar panels.

But Yiwu is the city that cheap junk built or really half built, since the basic infrastructure has not caught up with the growth. In the coming years, the people of Yiwu will have to find ways to finish building their city and then find new ways to survive in a changing global economy.

]]>http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/dollar-store-town-inside-worlds-biggest-wholesale-market/feed/4http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/dollar-store-town-inside-worlds-biggest-wholesale-market/Aircraft Automimicry: False Canopies Confuse Enemy Dogfighters & Designershttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/99pi/~3/ZncHFqr-cig/
http://99percentinvisible.org/article/aircraft-automimicry-false-canopies-confuse-enemy-dogfighters-designers/#commentsMon, 21 Nov 2016 18:00:05 +0000http://99percentinvisible.org/?post_type=article&p=16208In the heat of aerial battle, simple visual cues can throw off pilots and make dramatic split-second differences. Any camouflage helps, but fighters need to be sleek and maneuverable so design solutions likewise have to be physically unobtrusive. Working within this limitation, one particularly clever strategy for throwing off enemy planes involves painting a false]]>

In the heat of aerial battle, simple visual cues can throw off pilots and make dramatic split-second differences. Any camouflage helps, but fighters need to be sleek and maneuverable so design solutions likewise have to be physically unobtrusive.

The painted underside of a McDonnell Douglas CF-18 Hornet of the Royal Canadian Air Force

Working within this limitation, one particularly clever strategy for throwing off enemy planes involves painting a false canopy on the underside of an aircraft. Essentially: the transparent cockpit enclosure on the top of a plane is visually mimicked on its underside — a confused enemy pilot might thus mistake the bottom of a craft for its top in the heat of combat. Like many camouflaging strategies, this design approach borrows from precedents found in nature.

It is a type of automimicry found, for instance, in fish and other animals. Unlike conventional camouflage, however, that blends with surrounding environments, automimicry involves self-imitation. In the case of creatures, similar markings on the head and tail can confuse a potential predator about the speed and direction of their target — like a fish with a pair of fake eyes toward its rear.

Likewise with aircraft, a fake canopy painted on the bottom can create confusion around the craft’s attitude and potential maneuvers.

Fully-armed United States A-10 Thunderbolt II with false canopy paint

This specific form of camouflage was patented in 1980 by Keith Harris, a 50-year veteran of the Air Force Art Program in the United States. The strategy has since come to be used by air forces in Canada, South Africa and other countries around the world, sometimes in combination with countershading strategies.

Underside of a South African Air Force Cheetah C w/painted diamond (via simulator)

Employing an extension of the same idea, some fighters also feature a diamond painted on their backs. As with the famously counter-intuitive dazzle camouflage approach, the goal here is not complete disguise but momentary confusion — these diamonds can make it difficult to ascertain the shape, orientation and direction of a craft. This strategy is sometimes coupled with the false canopy to create maximum disorientation.

False canopies and similarly deceptive paint jobs are also not limited to aerial combat applications. While building their Kamov Ka-50 (“Black Shark”) attack and scout helicopter, the Russian military painted false cockpits on the vehicle to throw off spy satellites. The ruse apparently worked, evidenced by the fact that Western sources speculated wildly (and wrongly) about how the finished vehicle would be used. Designers attempting to reverse-engineer the aircraft were also at a loss.